Someone should make a moblogging site where users can post celebrity sighting photos from their phone or PDA, along with a brief description of where they’re posting from.

The closest I could find was this NYC-specific SMS group, which seems to be focused on text messages instead of photoblogging.

July 9, 2003: Joe pointed me to TextAmerica, a site that allows anyone to create a mobile photoblog (“mophos” or “moblogs”), so I created a new one for Celeb Sightings. Anyone can post to it by e-mailing their photos to [email protected] from their mobile phone. Get to it, people!

August 12, 2003: Buzznet.com has a celebrity moblogging page that people are actively using. Lyle Lovett, Janet Jackson, Jay Leno, and Randy Newman are some of the current highlights.

From Alan Murray’s Capitol Reports column:

“The highlight of last night’s party was a spoof video by Rep. Mary Bono, wife of the late Sonny Bono, and Billy Tauzin, House Commerce Committee chairman, who said they were ‘auditioning’ for Hilary’s job. They sang an Eminem-style song called ‘Piracy, Bad.’ Tauzin said he liked to download Sonny and Cher songs; Bono said, ‘I like the royalties.'”

If anyone knows where to find a copy of this duet, please send it along. I have to hear it. I added the lyrics below.

July 30, 2003: The transcript of the entire video is online at the video production studio’s website.

Continue reading “Piracy, Bad” →

We left the hospital at 2am, and got the call at 6am. She’s gone, and I’m heartbroken.

She was born Evelyn, but everyone called her Peggy. I called her Grandma. (1924-2003.)

Update: This is the eulogy that I wrote for her funeral yesterday.

Continue reading “Grandma” →

Idea of the day: a Thumbs-Up button in the browser, which you click whenever you find a webpage that interests you. Click it up to three times depending on how much you like it, a la TiVo ratings. Clicking the button either posts to your own weblog, or maybe to a central website that aggregates ratings for browsing and allows you to syndicate your own ratings to your weblog, if you have one.

This would be an ideal way to manage my upcoming links sidebar and, if centralized, a great way to browse new links by people I trust. No personal weblog or technical skill required. Get to work, LazyWeb!

Update: Brad points to StumbleUpon, which handles ratings but no weblog integration or syndication. And Graham points to Erik Benson’s Morale-O-Meter, which is a bookmarklet that posts website votes to a links sidebar. Very nice, thank you both.

I’m guest-blogging over on Jason Kottke’s Remaindered links sidebar for the next couple weeks. The links come fast and furious, so check frequently. This is a dry run for my own links sidebar, which will have to wait until the next redesign.

Also, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much here lately. My family’s been dealing with the rapid decline of my grandmother, so I’ve been spending almost all available free time at the hospital. While I’m not comfortable getting into personal details on my own site, my mom is baring her soul on her own site. It’s an intensely personal, difficult read.